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Hispanics and Catholic New York

By Sewell Chan July 30, 2008 3:42 pmJuly 30, 2008 3:42 pm

Father Félix Varela, a 19th-century social reformer in New York, was honored on a postage stamp in 1997. (Photo: United States Postal Service)

Many people, if asked when Hispanics began to reshape the Catholic Church in New York City, would probably put the date around 1950, when Puerto Rican migrants began arriving in Manhattan in large numbers. But in fact, Hispanics had exerted a powerful influence on religion and society in New York more than a century earlier, an important insight that emerged from a panel discussion on Tuesday night at the Museum of the City of New York.

The panel discussion — part of an exhibition, “Catholics in New York, 1808-1946,” that is on view through Dec. 31 — was billed as a talk on Latinos and the future of Catholic New York. The most informative parts of the 90-minute discussion focused on little-known aspects of social, religious and urban history. Rafael Pi Roman, the host of WNET’s “New York Voices,” moderated the discussion.

Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, an emeritus professor of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College and a distinguished scholar at the City University of New York, spoke first and gave a thorough recap of Hispanic Catholic life in New York through World War II.

He gave a quick overview of the life of Father Félix Varela, the Cuban-born priest who fled Spain in 1823 after the king, Ferdinand VII, waged a campaign of repression, and settled in New York, by way of Baltimore and Philadelphia. Here, Professor Stevens-Arroyo said, Father Varela founded the Church of the Transfiguration, on Mott Street in what is now Chinatown — “which as you recall is perilously close to what became Five Points,” the notorious immigrant slum at the center of the film “Gangs of New York.” Father Varela also got involved in the temperance movement.

In 1837, Father Varela became vicar general of the diocese of New York, but he was passed over for bishop in favor of John J. Hughes, who was elevated in 1842 and became the first archbishop of New York in 1850.

“John Hughes was Irish through and through, knew his people, knew the system, knew how to use the resources of the church to get more resources for the church,” Professor Stevens-Arroyo said.

Archbishop Hughes helped finance the construction of St. Patrick’s Cathedral by buying up the land around it, knowing that it would become much more valuable after the grand Gothic edifice was completed. The archbishop also founded a savings bank for immigrants, offering 3 percent interest while investing the bank’s assets at returns of 6 to 8 percent.

Yet despite Archbishop Hughes’s accomplishments, “the bond between the hierarchy and the faithful” was not widely felt outside of the ranks of Irish Catholics.

Most Latino immigrants in New York in the 19th century were exiles or merchants, and the first Catholic parish for them was founded in 1859; through a series of mergers it is now known as St. Peter-St. Paul-Our Lady of Pilar.

Among the more prominent Hispanics in the New York region in the 19th century were the Civil War general George G. Meade, who was born in Spain and was the Union commander at Gettsyburg; Joseph II, the deposted Bonapartist king of Spain; the revolutionary José Martí; and the Puerto Rican nationalists Ramón Betances and Eugenio María de Hostos.

Some of the Hispanics of the time worked as cigar rollers. “They would read, in a loud voice, from the best novels of the time,” while doing their often-tedious jobs, Professor Stevens-Arroyo said, and in so doing were exposed to works of philosophy and nationalist liberation, disguised as novels.

It was a time, Professor Stevens-Arroyo said, when Italian, Slovak, Polish and Spanish-speaking immigrants had their own “national parishes,” separately run and governed from the “territorial parishes” operated by the Irish-dominated church establishment. The “national parishes” were responsible for recruitment of their own priests and nuns; some of them competed for financing with the mainstream church.

Discrimination within the church was rife. Cardinal John McCloskey, the fifth bishop and second archbishop of New York, “told Polish people they didn’t need a parish but a pig shanty,” Professor Stevens-Arroyo said, while Archbishop Michael A. Corrigan, the McCloskey successor, told Mother Cabrini — later the first American to be canonized — that “the best thing she could do for Italians was to tell them to stay in their own land.”

By the early 20th century, Catholic outreach to Hispanics had begun to improve a bit. Cardinal John M. Farley took part in a synod in Puerto Rico in 1917 and Catholic settlement houses for Hispanic immigrants began to emerge, including Casita Maria, in Harlem, which later moved to the Bronx.

Political power also began to shift in the neighborhood. As Professor Stevens-Arroyo noted, Vito A. Marcantonio, the liberal Congressman for the area who famously championed the rights of minorities and was known for his involvement in the American Labor Party, gave public support to Pedro Albizu Campos, the Puerto Rican nationalist who was jailed at one point for sedition.

A turning point, Professor Stevens-Arroyo said, was Cardinal Francis J. Spellman’s decision, in 1939, to remove the diocesan priests from St. Cecilia’s, a largely Puerto Rican parish in East Harlem that had been originally founded for German immigrants, and to replace them with a Redemptorist pastor.

Cardinal Spellman’s decision, Professor Stevens-Arroyo said, had two reasons behind it. He had seen the work of the Redemptorists, a missionary order, during a cruise to Puerto Rico, and believed that they could effectively preach to the Puerto Rican population. In addition, Cardinal Spellman believed that the evangelization of Puerto Rican Catholics would help prevent the spread of Communism.

Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete, a distinguished Puerto Rican theologian, scientist and writer, spoke next. He spoke of the “special relationship” between New York City and Puerto Rico, and quipped, “I have aways felt New York City to be part of Puerto Rico.”

He added, “It is here where our flag was designed, where ‘Lamento Borincano’ was first heard, where the terrible nostalgia of growing old without being able to return to San Juan was expressed.”

Monsigor Albacete said that Spanish-speaking Catholics could reshape the faith in the same way that the confrontation of Roman Christianity and European invaders shaped the faith in the dark ages. “The future of the church on Earth is shaped by the encounter between human freedom, human history, and the attractive power of God’s love and mercy,” he said.

Sister Veronica Mendez, a longtime Puerto Rican activist in East Harlem and a member of the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, spoke next, offering three “snapshots” of her childhood. Her family left Puerto Rico for New York in 1944. She recalled being baptized at age 6 — a very different tradition from Irish Catholics, who believed in baptism immediately after birth, lest the child die without being cleansed of original sin. For Puerto Ricans, the celebration involved in baptism was important.

Sister Veronica also recalled being uncertain about which Mass at St. Cecilia’s to attend as a child: the English or the Spanish. “For a long time in New York, the Spanish church was the basement church,” she said. “That was the way we celebrated Mass.”

She recalled: “A third snapshot: I’m sitting in my Catholic school class and sister is teaching and she’s teaching us the importance of the name of Jesus and how out of reverence, we bow our heads every time we hear the name of Jesus.” The teacher then said, “‘And did you know there are some people who have such little respect for the name of Jesus that they give it to their children?'”

As the audience laughed, Sister Veronica recalled, “I remember wishing the floor would open up and swallow me.”

She pointed out that Jesus is a common name among Hispanics, and is not seen at all as inconsistent with the Catholic faith.

David Gonzalez, a metropolitan reporter and former foreign correspondent for The New York Times, traced the movement of Hispanic Catholics across the Bronx in the 1960s and 1970s — often keeping just ahead of the fires that ravaged the borough. Mr. Gonzalez, who graduated from Cardinal Hayes High School before attending Yale and Columbia, recalled the deteriorating conditions that made the Bronx a notorious symbol of urban demise, but he also traced the involvement of Latino Catholics in the revival of the borough — and of New York itself.

For example, there was Astin Jacobo, the unofficial mayor of Crotona, who died in 2002. Mr. Jacobo was the custodian of Mr. Gonzalez’s grammar school but so much more. In 1983, Mr. Jacobo confronted Mayor Edward I. Koch, demanding improvements in basic city services like sanitation.

Barbara Gonzalez, the chairwoman of the Centro Altagracia de Fe y Justicia, a Catholic advocacy and social justice organization based in Washington Heights and Inwood, offered a strong testimonial of her faith.

“I’m excited, I’m encouraged, by the fervent passion that our young people are demonstrating,” she said.

Along with New York history, one theme of the panel discussion was the impact of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity on the Catholic Church in the United States. A study by the Pew Hispanic Center last year found that about one-third of all Catholics in the United States are now Latinos; that more than half of Hispanic Catholics identify themselves as charismatics; and that many of those who are joining evangelical churches are Catholic converts.

I simply cannot believe that the statements allegedly said by A. McCloskey and Cardinal Corrigan are valid. That’s almost 150 years ago. Where is that written?
The mention of those unfounded remarks ill serves this otherwise informative City Room piece.

I was taken by the insensivity and outright bias of the early Catholic clergy in America. Of course that ethnic and racist bias was rampant throughout most of western and eastern civilization of the time and the sad part is that it still exists today. One wonders if we will ever learn and really come to beleive that we, humans, are all children of the One God that we all profess to beleive existed from all eternity.

Also interesting is that the Catholic Church in the USA is almost one third Hispanic.

A couple of trivial details: at Puerto Rico’s Pontificial Catholic University in Ponce, there is a building named after Cardinal Spellman; a picture of the Cardinal hung from the wall at the library – or it could’ve been the principal’s office, I am no longer sure – of the parochial school next door to the University, the Academia Santa María, during the years I attended it, 1970-83.

I often wondered who he was and what was his picture doing there. Later on I understood.

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